‘Holiday hunger’: inflation adds to family strain as UK schools break for summer

theguardian.com:

“My eldest daughter really likes cooking things like pancakes but I’ve had to reduce the number of eggs we buy and watch how much milk we drink,” says Victoria, a single mother of four school-age children, of the difficult choices she is making as food costs soar.

“It sounds horrible but I have had to reduce everything,” she continues. “I’ve changed from using soft spreads, because they’re so expensive. I find using block butter works out cheaper. What’s in my cupboard at the moment is just pasta, cereal, baked beans and bread – most of it’s from food banks.”

As the summer holidays get under way after most schools in England and Wales broke up this week, like many families Victoria is worried about the extra financial strain caused by the long break, with official figures showing inflation has hit a fresh 40-year high of 9.4%.

Rising grocery bills were one of the major forces driving up living costs, with sharp increases in the price of staples such as milk, butter and eggs propelling annual food price inflation to 9.8%.

The pressure on household finances means food banks are reporting soaring demand for holiday care packages. On Friday, the Central England Co-op food bank launched an urgent appeal for groceries such as UHT milk, pasta sauce and tinned vegetables as donations slump across the sector just as more people are asking for help.

Dawn Stanford, the operations director at the Nourish community food bank in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, says demand is high for its “holiday hunger” packs, which supplement its normal food parcels. The extras include spreadable butter, cheese and eggs, which some people now consider unaffordable, she says.

Price increases in this area are startling: the average price of a pint of milk is now